MRCOG develops socioeconomic forecasts to assist regional planners and decision-makers as they evaluate future transportation needs, perform land use and transportation project planning, and develop local land use and transportation policy. The 2040 Socioeconomic Forecast by Data Analysis Subzone (DASZ) is final with the approval of the 2040 Metropolitan Transportation Plan (MTP) and is now the official forecast for transportation planning purposes. The core variables of the DASZ forecast include population, households, housing units (single family and multi-family), and employment (basic, retail and service jobs).

Socioeconomic Estimate and Forecast by County

Some highlights of the forecast include:

• The MRCOG region is projected to gain 460,000 people to reach 1.375 million by 2040.
• The MRCOG region is projected to gain 185,000 jobs resulting in a total of 582,000 jobs by 2040.
• Bernalillo County is expected to capture 68 percent of the region's population growth and 72 percent of its job growth between 2012 and 2040.
• Led by Rio Rancho, Sandoval County employment is expected to more than double.
• Valencia County will see fast paced growth in both population (65 percent) and employment (64 percent).
• Service employment will be the fastest growing segment of the economy. Led by the healthcare and education sectors it is expected to grow by 61 percent between 2012 and 2040.

Clearly, growth in the region has slowed substantially since 2008. As a result, the projections for population and employment are both approximately 16 percent lower than the 2035 MTP once updated trends were incorporated into the forecast assumptions. Nonetheless, the forecast assumes that over time, migration will rebound and employment growth will resume as the region continues to emerge from the lingering impacts of the Great Recession.

Jobs Housing Balance

For transportation planning purposes, it is useful to understand growth patterns east and west of the Rio Grande given the implications for travel along the river crossings. There has been a historical imbalance of jobs and housing west of the Rio Grande, which results in heavily directional travel eastbound in the AM peak commuting hours and westbound during the PM peak, and existing congestion on our river crossings is expected to become much worse. The table below highlights the existing and forecast jobs-to-housing ratios for several geographies.

Jobs-to-Housing Ratio East and West of the Rio Grande by Geography, 2012 and 2040

The region's overall jobs-to-housing ratio was at 1.04 in 2012 and is expected to decline just slightly to 1.02 in 2040 as population grows slightly faster than jobs. The imbalance on the Westside of 0.56 jobs for each home in 2012 is expected to improve over the forecast period to 0.64; however, it remains substantially lower than the Eastside's ratio of 1.35.

The 2040 forecast anticipates that just over half of all new housing and 40 percent of all new jobs will locate west of the river. In all, 96,000 new housing units (a 64 percent increase) and 74,000 new jobs (an 87 percent increase) are projected west of the Rio Grande between 2012 and 2040.

  To access the 2040 socioeconomic forecast go to the DASZ datasets page. To read a brief description of how the forecast is produced click here.